I have been asking questions such
as “What is the Islamic view of women?” and “What does it mean to be a Muslim
woman?” for a long time. I was born female to a Muslim family living in Lahore,
a Muslim city in a Muslim country, Pakistan. Not until 1974, however, did I
begin my serious study of women’s issues in Islam and — I am still shocked to
reflect — this happened almost by accident.

I was, at that time,
faculty adviser to the Muslim Students’ Association chapter at Oklahoma State
University in Stillwater. (I had acquired this “honour” solely because there was
no Muslim man on the faculty and it was mandatory for each chapter to have a
faculty adviser.) Their annual seminar included an address by the faculty
adviser, so I was asked — albeit not with overwhelming enthusiasm — if I would
read a paper on women in Islam. I knew that speakers were not generally assigned
subjects and that I had been asked to speak on women in Islam because, in the
opinion of the group, it would have been totally inappropriate to expect a
Muslim woman, even one who taught them Islamic Studies, to be competent to speak
on any other subject pertaining to Islam. I resented what the assigning of the
subject meant.

Still, I accepted the
invitation for two reasons. First, I knew that being invited to address an
all-male, largely Arab-Muslim group that prided itself on its patriarchalism was
itself a breakthrough. Second, I was so tired of hearing Muslim men pontificate
on the position or status or role of women in Islam, I thought that it might be
worthwhile to present a woman’s viewpoint. I began my research on the subject
more out of a sense of duty than out of any deep awareness that I had embarked
on perhaps the most important journey of my life.

I do not know exactly at
what time my “academic” study of women in Islam became a passionate quest for
truth and justice on behalf of Muslim women — perhaps it was when I realized the
impact on my own life of the so-called Islamic ideas and attitudes regarding
women. What began as a scholarly exercise became simultaneously an Odyssean
venture in self-understanding. But “enlightenment” does not always lead to
“endless bliss”. The more I saw the justice and compassion of God reflected in
the Qur’anic teachings regarding women, the more anguished and angry I became at
seeing the injustice and inhumanity to which Muslim women in general are
subjected in actual life. I began to feel that it was my duty — as a part of the
microscopic minority of educated Muslim women — to do as much
consciousness-raising regarding the situation of Muslim women as I
could.

The
Need for Women’s Theology in Islam

Despite the fact that women
such as Khadijah and ‘A’ishah (wives of the Prophet Muhammad) and Rabi’a
al-Basri (the outstanding woman Sufi) figure significantly in early Islam, the
Islamic tradition has, by and large, remained rigidly patriarchal until the
present time, prohibiting the growth of scholarship among women particularly in
the realm of religious thought. Thus the sources on which the Islamic tradition
is based, mainly the Qur’an, the Hadith literature (oral traditions attributed
to the Prophet), and Fiqh (jurisprudence), have been interpreted only by Muslim
men, who have arrogated to themselves the task of defining the ontological,
theological, sociological and eschatological status of Muslim women.

Hardly surprisingly, then,
until now the majority of Muslim women have accepted this situation passively.
They are almost unaware of the extent to which their human (and Islamic, in a
ideal sense) rights have been violated by their male-dominated and male-centred
societies, which have continued to assert glibly and tirelessly that Islam has
given women more rights than any other religious tradition. For Muslim women,
kept for centuries in physical, mental, and emotional bondage, analyzing their
personal experience is probably overwhelming. While the rate of literacy, for
example, is low in many Muslim countries, the rate of literacy among the world’s
one-half billion Muslim women, especially the majority who live in rural areas,
is among the lowest in the world.

Today, largely due to the
pressure of anti-women laws being promulgated in some parts of the Muslim world
under the cover of “Islamization”, women with some degree of education and
awareness are realizing that religion is being used for oppression rather than
for liberation. To understand the strong impetus to “Islamize” Muslim societies,
it is necessary to know that the greatest challenge confronting the Muslim world
is that of modernity. The caretakers of Muslim traditionalism are aware that
viability in the modern technological age requires adoption of the scientific or
rational outlook, which inevitably brings about major changes in modes of
thinking and behaviour.

Women, both educated and
uneducated, are participating in the national workforce and contributing to
national development. They think and behave differently from women who have no
sense of their individual identity or autonomy as active agents in a
history-making process or from women who merely regard themselves as instruments
designed to minister to and reinforce a patriarchal system they believe to be
divinely instituted.

In the recent past, many
women in Pakistan were jolted out of their “dogmatic slumber” by the enactment
of such laws as the Hudud laws (capital crime) or the Qanun-e-Shahadat
(law of evidence), and by threatened legislation pertaining to women’s
Qisas and Diyat (“blood fine”) aimed to keep women “in their
place,” which means secondary, subordinate, and inferior to men.

In the face both of
military dictatorship and religious autocracy, valiant efforts have been made by
women’s groups in Pakistan to protest the manifestly anti-women laws and to
highlight cases of gross injustice and brutality toward women. It is still,
however, not clearly and fully understood even by many women’s rights activists
in Pakistan and other Muslim countries that the negative ideas and attitudes
about women prevalent in Muslim societies are rooted in theology. Unless and
until the theological foundations of misogynistic and androcentric tendencies in
the Islamic tradition are demolished, Muslim women will continue to be
brutalized and discriminated against, despite statistical improvements relating
to female education, employment, or social and political rights. No matter how
many socio-political rights are granted to women, as long as they are
conditioned to accept the myths used by theologians or religious hierarchies to
shackle their bodies, hearts, minds, and souls, they will never become fully
developed or whole human beings.

In my judgement the
importance of engaging in a serious theological discussion of women-related
issues in Islam today is paramount to liberate not only Muslim women but also
Muslim men from unjust structures and laws that make a peer relationship between
men and women impossible. It is good to know that in the last hundred years
there have been at least two significant Muslim thinkers — Qasim Amin from Egypt
and Mumtaz ‘Ali from India — who have been staunch advocates of women’s rights.
Still, knowing this hardly lessens the pain of also knowing that even in this
age, characterized by the explosion of knowledge, all but a handful of Muslim
women lack any knowledge of Islamic theology. It is profoundly discouraging to
contemplate how few Muslim women there are in the world today who possess the
competence, even if they have the courage and the commitment, to engage in
historical-critical study of Islam’s primary sources and to develop a theology
focusing on women-related issues in the specific context of the Islamic
tradition.

The Jewish and Christian
View of Creation

My inquiry into the
theological roots of man-woman inequality in the Islamic tradition led me to
expand my field of study in at least two significant ways. First, realizing the
profound impact of Hadith literature upon Muslim consciousness, particularly the
two collections, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim which, next to
the Qur’an, the Sunni Muslims regard as the most authoritative books in Islam, I
examined with care the women-related ahadith in these collections.
Second, I studied several important writings by Jewish and Christian feminist
theologians who were attempting to trace the theological origins of the
anti-women ideas and attitudes found in their respective traditions.

As a result of my study and
deliberation, I perceived that not only in the Islamic but also in the Jewish
and Christian traditions three theological assumptions are the base of the
superstructure of men’s alleged superiority to women. These three assumptions
are: (1) that God’s primary creation is man, not woman, since woman is believed
to have been created from man’s rib, and is therefore ontologically derivative
and secondary; (2) that woman, not man, was the primary agent of what is
customarily described as man’s Fall or man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden,
and hence “all daughters of Eve” are to be regarded with hatred, suspicion, and
contempt; (3) that woman was created not only from man but for
man, which makes her existence merely instrumental and not of fundamental
importance.

The
ordinary Muslim believes, as seriously as the ordinary Jew or Christian, that
Adam was God’s primary creation and that Eve was made from Adam’s rib. If
confronted with the fact that this firmly entrenched belief is derived mainly
from the Bible, and contradicts the Qur’an, this Muslim is almost certain to be
shocked. The rather curious and tragic truth is that even Western-educated
Muslims have little idea of the extent to which the Muslim psyche bears the
imprint of Jewish and Christian ideas and attitudes pertaining to
women.

Without
some knowledge of what the Bible says about the creation of Adam and Eve, I do
not believe that it is possible for Muslims to evaluate to what degree their
views regarding women (particularly with reference to the issues of her creation
and her responsibility in the Fall) have been influenced by the Jewish and
Christian tradition rather than by the Qur’an. Such evaluation is, I believe, an
essential prerequisite to developing a feminist theology rooted in the
Qur’an.

The
biblical account of creation consists of two different sources the Yahwist (10th
century B.C.E.) and the Priestly (5th century BCE), from which arise two
different traditions. There are four references to woman’s creation in Genesis:
(1) 1:26-27, Priestly tradition; (2) 2:7, Yahwist tradition; (3) 2:18-24,
Yahwist tradition; and (4) 5:1-2, Priestly tradition.

Study of these texts shows
that the Hebrew term adam (“of the soil”) functions mostly as a generic
term for humanity. Pointing out that the correct translation of this term is
“the human”, Leonard Swindler (Biblical Affirmations of Woman) observes:
“It is a mistake to translate it in Genesis 1:1 to 2:22 either as ‘man’ in the
male sense, or as a proper name, ‘Adam’”.

Of the four texts referring
to creation, undoubtedly the most influential has been Genesis 2:18-24, which
states that woman (ishshah) was taken from man (ish). From this
text it has generally been inferred that (1) Adam was God’s primary creation
from whom Eve, a secondary creation, was derived and (2) Eve was created simply
and solely to be the helpmate of Adam. Sheila Collins (A Different Heaven and
Earth) concludes: “The seeds of woman’s subjection and of her predilection to
evil are to be found in Hebrew culture and Hebrew religious tradition.” However,
as Clark and Richardson (Women and Religion) note: “It is to the Hebrews’ credit
that they did not, at least in the literature contained in the Jewish canon of
the Bible, interpret the stories of Genesis 2 and 3 (Eve’s creation and her
part in the
first sin in Eden)
as a justification for negative attitudes toward women. Eve, strangely enough,
does not function as any kind of female symbol in the Old Testament.” In the
Christian tradition, however, Eve’s derivative status and connection with the
Fall have been used to allege man’s superiority to woman.

Feminist theologians of the
modern era, both women and men, are acutely aware that traditional
interpretations of the Yahwist’s account of woman’s creation in Genesis 2:18-24
have been strongly anti-women and have through the ages caused women
“immeasurable harm” (Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex). While
some of them consider the texts irredeemably sexist, others believe that if the
Genesis accounts of human creation are understood in the light of modern
knowledge in general, and modern hermeneutics in particular, they reveal new
meanings that startlingly oppose traditional exegesis.

It seems both strange and
ironic that while in our times an increasing number of Jews and Christians are
rejecting traditional interpretations of the story of woman’s creation, Muslims,
who, generally speaking, are ignorant of or hostile to Jewish and Christian
religious literature, continue to hold on to them, perceiving them to be
necessary to preserving the integrity of the Islamic way of life.

Creation in the
Qur’an

While specific reference is
made in Genesis to the creation of Adam and Eve, there is no corresponding
reference in the Qur’an. In fact, there is no mention of Eve (Hawwa’) at all in
the Qur’an. The term Adam occurs 25 times, but there is no categorical
statement in the Qur’an that Adam was the first human being created by Allah.
The term is used most frequently in reference to more than one or two human
beings.

That
the term Adam functions as a collective noun and stands for humankind is
substantiated by an analysis of the several verses in which it occurs. The
collective use of Adam is corroborated by the fact that the Qur’an
sometimes replaces the term Adam by Alinsan or Bashar,
which are both generic terms for humanity. Here it is important to note that
though Adam usually does not refer to a particular human being, it does
refer to human beings in a particular way, as pointed out by Muhammad Iqbal.
“(I)n the verses which deal with the origin of man as a living being, the Qur’an
uses the words Bashar or Insan, not Adam which it reserves
for man in his capacity of God’s vice regent on earth... The word Adam is
retained and used more as a concept than as a name of a concrete human
individual.” It is noteworthy that the Qur’an uses the terms bashar, al-
insan, and an-nas while describing the process of the physical
creation of human beings. It uses Adam more selectively to refer to human
beings only when they become representative of a self-conscious, knowledgeable
and morally autonomous humanity.

Instead of “Adam and
Hawwa’”, the Qur’an speaks of “Adam and zauj.” Muslims, almost without
exception, assume that Adam was the first human being created by Allah and that
he was a man. If Adam was a man, it follows that Adam’s zauj mentioned in
the Qur’an becomes equated with Hawwa’ (Eve). Neither the initial assumption nor
the inferences drawn from it are, however, supported in a clear or conclusive
way by the Qur’anic text. The Qur’an states neither that Adam was the first
human being nor that
Adam was a male.

The term Adam is a
masculine noun, but linguistic gender is not sex. If Adam is not
necessarily a man, then Adam’s zauj is not necessarily a woman. In fact,
the term zauj is also a masculine noun and, unlike the term Adam,
it has a feminine counterpart, zaujatun. (Here it may be noted that
the most accurate English equivalent of zauj is not “wife” or “husband”
or even “spouse” but “mate”. The Qur’an uses zauj with reference not only
to human beings but to every kind of creation, including animals, plants and fruits).

Why then does the Qur’an
use zauj and not zaujatun if the reference is indeed to woman? In
my opinion, the Qur’an leaves the terms Adam and zauj deliberately
unclear, not only as regards to sex but also as regards to number, because its
purpose is not to narrate certain events in the life of a man and woman (i.e.,
the Adam and Eve of popular imagination) but to refer to some life experiences
of all human beings, men and women together.

The Qur’an describes human
creation in 30 or so passages which are found in various chapters. Generally
speaking, it refers to the creation of humanity (and nature) in two ways: as an
evolutionary process where diverse stages or phases are mentioned sometimes
together and sometimes separately, and as an accomplished fact or in its
totality. In the passage in which human creation is described “concretely” or
“analytically”, we find that no mention is made of the separate or distinct
creation of either man or woman. In those passages in which reference is made to
Allah’s creation of human beings as sexually differentiated mates, no priority
or superiority is accorded to either man or woman.

In summary, the Qur’an
even-handedly uses both feminine and masculine terms and imagery to describe the
creation of humanity from a single source. That Allah’s original creation was
undifferentiated humanity, and neither man nor woman (who appeared
simultaneously at a subsequent time), is implicit in a number of Qur’anic
passages.

Hawwa’ in the Hadith
literature

If the Qur’an makes no
distinction between the creation of man and woman, as it clearly does not, why
do Muslims believe that Hawwa’ (Eve) was created from the rib of Adam? Although
the Genesis 2 account of woman’s creation is accepted by virtually all Muslims,
it is difficult to believe that it entered the Islamic tradition directly, for
very few Muslims ever read the Bible. It is much more likely that it became a
part of Muslim heritage through its assimilation in Hadith literature, which has
been in many ways the lens through which the Qur’an has been seen since the
early centuries of Islam.

Hadith literature, which
modernist Muslims tend to regard with a certain scepticism, is surrounded by
controversies, centring particularly around the question of the authenticity of
individual ahadith as well as the body of the literature as a whole.
Noted Islamicists, such as Alfred Guillaume, H.A.R. Gibb, and M.G.S. Hodgson
have underscored the importance of the Hadith literature, stating that it not
only has its own autonomous character in point of law and even of doctrine, but
that it also has an emotive aspect, hard to overstate, relating to the conscious
and subconscious thought and feeling of Muslims, individually and
collectively.

That the story of Eve’s
creation from Adam’s rib had become part of the Hadith literature is evident
from the following hadith cited by Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad in their
article, “Eve: Islamic Image of Woman”:

“When God sent Iblis out of
the Garden and placed Adam in it, he dwelt in it alone and had no one to
socialize with. God sent sleep on him then He took a rib from his left side and
placed flesh in its place and created Hawwa’ from it. When he awoke he found a
woman seated near his head. He asked her, ‘Who were you created?’ She answered,
‘Woman’. He said ‘Why were you created?’ She said, ‘That you might find rest in
me.’ The angels said, ‘What is her name?’ and he said, ‘Hawwa’.’ They said, ‘Why
was she called Hawwa’?’ He said, ‘Because she was created from a living
thing’.”

This
Hadith clashes sharply with the Qur’anic accounts of human creation while
it has an obvious correspondence to Genesis 2:18-33 and Genesis
3:20.

Some
changes, however, are to be noted in the story of woman’s creation as retold in
the above Hadith. It mentions the left rib as the source of woman’s
creation. In Arab culture great significance is attached to right and left, the
former being associated with everything auspicious and the latter with the
opposite. In Genesis woman is named Eve after the Fall but in the above
Hadith she is called Hawwa’ from the time of her creation. In Genesis
woman is named Eve because “she is the mother of all who live” (thus a primary
source of life), but above she is named Hawwa’ because she was created from a
living thing (hence a derivative creature). These variations are not to be
ignored. Biblical and other materials are seldom incorporated without alteration
into a Hadith. The above example illustrates how, with respect to woman,
Arab biases were added to the adopted text.

Citation of the above
Hadith, and those like it, by significant Muslim exegetes and historians
shows the extent to which authoritative works both of Qur’anic exegesis and
Islamic history had become coloured by the Hadith literature. In the course of
time, many ahadith became “invisible” the later commentators referring
not to them but to the authority of earlier commentators who had cited them to
support their views. This practice made it very hard to curtail their influence
since they became diffused throughout the body of Muslim culture.

Perhaps no better proof of
how totally ahadith such as the one cited have penetrated Muslim culture
can be given than the fact that the myth of the creation of Hawwa’ from Adam’s
rib was accepted uncritically even by Qadsim Amin (1836-1906), the Egyptian
judge and women’s rights activist. His book Tahrir al-Mara (The Emancipation
of Women, 1899) and Al-Mara al-Jadida (The Modern Woman, 1900) were
epoch-making in the history of Muslim feminism. Amin’s romantic interpretation
of the myth, reminiscent of Milton’s, shows that he did not realize how
fundamentally the issue that concerned him most deeply, namely, woman’s social
equality with man in a strongly male-centered and male-dominated Muslim society,
hinged upon acceptance or rejection of the creation story and its anti-women
interpretation. Nor, unfortunately, do many present-day Muslim women’s rights
activists realize that this myth undergirds those very anti-women attitudes and
structures they seek to change.

Yet such ahadith are
found not only in the significant secondary sources of Islam but also in
Sahih al-Bukhari (compiled by Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, A.H.
194-256 / A.D.810-870) and Sahih Muslim (compiled by Muslim bin
al-Hajjah, A.H. 202 OR 206-261 / A.D. 817-875), the two Hadith collections
regarded by Sunni Muslims as being second in authority only to the Qur’an. They
were painstakingly collected from oral transmissions traceable to the sayings
and precepts of the Prophet himself.

While it is not possible to
give a detailed critical analysis here of either the isnad (list of
transmitters) or the matn (content) of the six ahadith that deal
with the creation of woman, a few comments on both may be useful. Analysis of
the matn of the ahadith leads to identifying the following common
elements in them: (1) Woman is created from a rib or is like a rib. (2) The most
curved and crooked part of the rib is its top. (3) The crookedness of the rib
(and of the woman) is irremediable and any effort to remove it will result in
breakage. (4) In view of the above, an attitude of kindness is recommended and
those who wish to benefit from women are advised to do so “while crookedness
remains in her.”

Concerning these statements
the following observations are made: (1) The rib story obviously originates in
Genesis 2 but no mention is made in any of ahadith of Adam. This
eliminates the Yahwist’s androcentrism but also depersonalizes the source of
woman’s creation (i.e., the “rib” could, theoretically, be non-human). (2) The
misogynist elements of the ahadith, absent from Genesis, clash with the
teachings of the Qur’an, which describes all human beings as having been created
fi ahsan-i taqwim (“most justly-proportioned and with the highest
capabilities”)… (3) I cannot understand the relevance of making the statement
that the most crooked part of the rib is its top. (4) The exhortation to be kind
to women would make sense if women were, in fact, born with a natural handicap
and needed compassion. Is “irremediable crookedness” such a handicap? (5) The
exhortation to kindness seems to be pernicious, smacking of a hedonism or
opportunism, which is hard to appreciate even if women were indeed “irremediably
crooked”…

The
theology of woman implicit in the ahadith is based upon generalizations
about her ontology, biology, and psychology that are contrary to the letter and
spirit of the Qur’an. These ahadith ought to be rejected on the basis of
their content alone. However, matn-analysis (which was strongly urged by
Ibn Khaldun, A.D. 1332-1406) has received scant attention in the work of many
Muslim scholars who insist that a Hadith is to be judged primarily on the
basis of itsisnad. With regard to the isnad the following points
may be noted: (1) All these ahadith are cited on the authority of Abu
Hurairah, a Companion of the Prophet who was regarded as controversial by many
early Muslim scholars, including Imam Abu Hanifah (A.D. 700-767), founder of the
largest Sunni school of law. (Here it is pertinent to note that though a more
critical attitude toward Hadith and Hadith-transmitters prevailed during the
earliest phase of Islam, later it became a “capital crime” to be critical of any
Companion.) (2) All of the ahadith are gharib (the lowest grade of
Hadith classification) because they contain a number of transmitters who were
single reporters. Eminent scholars of Hadith defined a sahih or sound
Hadith as one that is related in the first place by a Companion, in the second
place by at least two Followers, and thereafter by many narrators. (3) All of
the ahadith are da’if (“weak”) because they have a number of
unreliable transmitters.

I regard the issue of
woman’s creation as more important, philosophically and theologically, than any
other. If man and woman have been created equal by God, who is believed to be
the ultimate arbiter of value, then they cannot become unequal, essentially, at
a subsequent time. Hence their obvious inequality in the patriarchal world is in
contravention of God’s plan. On the other hand, if man and woman have been
created unequal by God, then they cannot become equal, essentially, at a
subsequent time. Hence any attempt to equalize them is contrary to God’s
intent.

Given
the importance of this issue, it is imperative for Muslim women’s rights
activists to know that the egalitarian accounts of human creation given in the
Qur’an have been displaced by the contents of ahadith, even though this
cannot happen in theory. The only way that Muslim daughters of Hawwa’ can end
the history of their subjection at the hands of the sons of Adam is by returning
to the point of origin and challenging the authenticity of the ahadith
that make women derivative and secondary in creation, but primary in guilt,
sinfulness, and mental and moral deficiency. They must challenge the later
sources that regard them not as ends in themselves but as instruments created
for the convenience and comfort of men.

Riffat Hassan,
Professor
in the Religious Studies Program at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, this
year served in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS as a Research
Associate and Visiting Lecturer. She is author of three books.